Transactional risk model for short and intermediate term psychiatric inpatient treatment of children.

The transactional model provides a novel guide for the psychiatric hospital treatment of children by improving the attunement between the child and his or her important interpersonal environment. Since children's development is highly context dependent, generalization of the gains made in the hospital will largely depend upon how well the child's parents and school can internalize the hospital experience. One method to implement this transactional model is to bring the child's parents and school into the hospital to join the child's treatment team.